A Case So GRUESOME The Police Needed Therapy

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Rita Huffman, East Wanachi
2. 9:00 – 12:00: Douglas County, Jack Owen Spilman III
3. 12:00 – 15:00: Penny Davis, Mandy Huffman, Rita Huffman

Notable quotes from "A Case So GRUESOME The Police Needed Therapy"

• Rita Huffman was a 48-year-old saleswoman and a divorced mother living in a rural part of East Wanachi. She was described as a friendly and hardworking mother. Rita shared her home with her.

  about Rita Huffman · at 0:16

• But who was he? Jack Owen Spilman III grew up in Eastern Washington and had a troubled nomadic youth. His mother went through four different marriages and her four children, Jack and his siblings.

  about Jack Owen Spilman III · at 9:04

• Even claim that butchering the animals aroused him. After his arrest, Jack was charged in Douglas County with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder for the slaying of…

  about Douglas County · at 11:54

• Unclear, Jack voluntarily confessed to the murder of another victim, 9-year-old Penny Davis. In September of 1994, Penny told her brother that she was going to go out for a…

  about Penny Davis · at 13:05

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Rita Huffman — Person · 3 mentions · first at 0:16
• Penny Davis — Person · 3 mentions · first at 13:11
• Jack Owen Spilman III — Person · 1 mention · first at 9:04
• Mandy Huffman — Person · 1 mention · first at 12:03
  Charged in Douglas County with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder for the slaying of Rita and Mandy Huffman. These charges carried the possibility of the death…

Places & events

• East Wanachi — Place · 1 mention · first at 0:20
  Rita Huffman was a 48-year-old saleswoman and a divorced mother living in a rural part of East Wanachi. She was described as a friendly and hardworking mother. Rita shared her…
• Douglas County — Place · 1 mention · first at 11:59

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Hi. If you didn't know, we have a podcast now. The link is in the description and pinned in the comments. If you want to check it out, that'll be very cool. Thank you. Bye. This case takes place in the USA in the 1990s. Rita Huffman was a 48-year-old saleswoman and a divorced mother living in a rural part of East Wanachi. She was described as a friendly and hardworking mother. Rita shared her home with her younger daughter, Mandy. Her personal life was stable and she had a boyfriend at the time. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary in the days before what happened. Rita's daughter, Mandy, was 15 at the time. Mandy was a popular girl at school. She played on a softball team and was known as an outgoing, athletic girl with a bright smile. In the spring of 1995, she was finishing the school year and was looking forward to a summer break. But it was also around this time that a 25-year-old man drifted into the

1:00 city in Washington and rented a place just a few blocks from Rita Huffman's home. This man had no known relationship with Rita or Mandy. They never knew he existed. Unbeknownst to them, however the stranger in their vicinity had taken a dark interest in their family. This man secretly watched the Huffmans for weeks, studying their habits as he indulged in violent fantasies of himself as a werewolf, stalking his prey. One apparent vulnerability in the Huffman household was a sliding glass door at the back of their house. They left this door unlocked. The family lived in a safe, semi-ural neighborhood, and they didn't obsess over safety. It was somewhat of a different time, and of course, there were no obvious warning signs. On the evening of the 12th of April, 1995, Rita spoke with her boyfriend on the phone at around 10 p.m.

1:54 And according to him, nothing seemed to miss during the conversation, which tragically was their last conversation. However, sometime after 11 p.m., as the mother and daughter were winding down for the night, this unknown man set his plan in motion. Using the unlocked rear door, the intruder slipped into the Huffman house under the cover of darkness. The neighbors heard nothing. Inside the Huffman household, Rita and Mandy were in separate rooms. Rita was relaxing in the living room when this man approached her, brandishing a knife and wearing a ski mask. Before she could even make any noise, the killer ambushed her and repeatedly stabbed her at least 31 times, mainly to the upper chest and the neck. With Rita's life fading, the killer headed upstairs to find Mandy.

2:46 The killer wasn't as stealthy the second time. He never got the chance to deploy an attack out of the blue. Mandy noticed the killer, and when he tried to attack her, she bravely fought back. Defensive wounds across her body prove this. But the killer was a grown man. He managed to inflict several stab wounds to her neck and chest just like he did to her mother. The only distinguishing act was the fatal strike delivered by a powerful blow to the side of the skull with a baseball bat. And believe it or not, it was after the murders took place that the rail depravity began. The order of these events is not fully understood but what is known is that after the killing, the intruder carried out several mutilations of an intimate kind.

3:33 To Mandy, the killer essay herostuously. He then reached for the baseball bat once more and forced it deep into her abdomen through her privates. He then sliced open her torso from the groin area and moved around her organs. It's also suspected that the killer consumed her blood. And the mutilation didn't just stop here. The killer then drew his knife once more and began cutting the tissue away from Mandy's private area which he then draped across her face as she lay on the bed with a baseball bat still in place. A truly grotesque display. This psychopath then undertook similar mutilations to Rita. However, he omitted the essay. It appeared that she was too old for his taste. Nevertheless he opened her abdomen, exposed her organs, and chopped off her breasts, and placed them on her nightstand. She too was left in a degrading position on the couch. The killer was in the home for around 2 hours and left shortly after.

4:36 The next morning then rolled around. Rita also had an elder daughter who didn't live with her at the time. Her name is Angie. Angie grew concerned when she couldn't reach her mother or sister by telephone. This was out of character. They would always answer the phone. So later on into the morning, Angie got into her car and made her way over to the house to check on her family. Angie found the front door locked. So she walked around the back, entering through the same sliding door that was left open. Inside, she was met with a scene of pure horror. Nobody should have to experience what she experienced. The distraught sister ran to her neighbor's house screaming for help and the police were called right away. And with this the investigation began for one of America's most gruesome murders. Given the heinous state of the victims investigators immediately summarized that robbery or financial gain was not

5:32 the motive. The brutality spoke to a deviant and sadistic killer. The challenge was that the perpetrator had left no obvious clues like fingerprints or known DNA in the home. Nonetheless police began piecing together subtle evidence from the neighborhood and the crime scene. One of the first breakthroughs came from a neighbor's account. They reported seeing a black Chevrolet pickup truck parked near the Huffman residence on the night of the murders, specifically at around 11:30 p.m., which detectives determined was roughly the time of the killings. This struck investigators as significant.

6:10 That very lead soon intersected with another event from the same night. About 11:30 a.m. on the 13th of April, roughly 2 hours after the likely time of the murders, a police officer noticed a lone male sitting in a black pickup truck near the Huffman home. The officer who saw this man thought it was strange, so he approached. But here's the strange part. The man inside the black pickup truck immediately got out of his truck and raised his hands as if anticipating an arrest. The officer questioned the man briefly. The man identified himself and claimed that he was just out for a drive. Seeing no obvious evidence of a crime at that moment, the cop let the man go with a warning. He had no idea that he had just come face to face with a killer who had just killed two people merely hours before. This information immediately elevated the unknown pickup driver to a person of interest in the double homicide. The suspect was soon

7:07 identified as a 25-year-old man who had recently moved to the area. However there wasn't enough evidence to arrest him just yet, so authorities discreetly placed him under 24-hour surveillance while forensic work was underway. Investigators then began digging into the suspect's background. They learned that he was staying in a rented basement room only a short drive away from the Huffman house. A woman who lived in the same residence told the police that on the night of the murders, this man had left the house at around 11:00 p.m. and did not return until 2:00 a.m. The timeline neatly fit into the window of the crime. As civilians continued detectives also obtained a search warrant to gather physical evidence.

7:51 During the trailing of this man officers observed him discarding a piece of clothing. This piece of clothing was a ski mask soaked in what appeared to be blood. They retrieved it and found that the blood on the mask matched one of the Huffman victims. And notably, the blood was saturated around the mouth area of the mask, suggesting that the wearer had pressed his mouth to a wound, leading investigators to think that this man had drank their blood. On the 14th of April just 2 days after the murder investigators made another crucial discovery. A 12-in kitchen blade was found hidden in a garbage can outside the hall where the suspect's truck had been seen by the officer. The knife had dried blood all over it, and it was missing from a set in the Huffman's home kitchen knife block. This was the murder weapon. The police now had more than enough evidence to arrest this man. And so on the 19th of April 1995, a team of

8:52 officers approached the suspect's residence and arrested him without incident. The man now in custody was identified as Jack Owen Spelman III. But who was he? Jack Owen Spilman III grew up in Eastern Washington and had a troubled nomadic youth. His mother went through four different marriages and her four children, Jack and his siblings grew up without knowing their biological fathers. By his early teens, Jack was exhibiting antisocial behavior. He struggled academically and ultimately dropped out of school in the 9th grade whilst living in a small town in Washington. After leaving school, he drifted between friends and relatives homes. Those who knew him in his late teens recalled a strange man with very few close friends. In his early adulthood, Jack developed a strange fascination with wolves and violence. He began collecting wolf memorabilia like posters and ornaments and pelts. He was

9:50 pretty much obsessed. According to later accounts from acquaintances and family Jack fantasized that he himself was some sort of werewolf. He often imagined stalking human prey under the moonlight and then savagely attacking. and Jack's propensity for violence soon surfaced in earlier incidents. He accumulated a criminal record as a young man which included burglary, theft, assault, and malicious mischief in Washington State. In 1993, at the age of 23, he and a male friend were arrested for an alleged essay of a woman they had met at a bar in Kent. According to the police report Jack offered this woman a ride home.

10:31 When she realized their sinister intent she resisted, but the men just continued. She later reported that Jack pinned her down while his friend attempted to SA her. The woman thankfully was able to escape and she went straight to the authorities. Jack was charged with first-degree SA in that case, but the charges were eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence. But while Jack was in jail, he fantasized about stalking women and the things he would do to them. A fellow inmate also stated that Jack would always voice his desires for becoming a notorious serial killer when he got out of prison. In fact, he would often talk about the things he wanted to do to girls with strange intensity. Whilst in prison, he took out books from the prison library and obsessed over content about how to not get caught for crimes.

11:23 He then learned to shave his entire body before committing a crime to reduce the chances of leaving hairs and DNA. After the charges against him were dropped Jack was released. Jack had an IQ of a fourth grader well into adulthood, so job prospects were not endless for him. For employment, he held various menial jobs. At one point, he worked as a butcher's apprentice, a fact that prosecutors would later highlight given the precise and gruesome manner in which he dismembered his victims. Some sources even claim that butchering the animals aroused him. After his arrest, Jack was charged in Douglas County with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder for the slaying of Rita and Mandy Huffman. These charges carried the possibility of the death penalty under Washington law. Prosecutors announced that they would indeed seek the death sentence given the unbelievably gruesome nature of his crimes. In mid 1995, as

12:21 forensic evidence piled up, the case against Jack for the Huffman murders was rockolid. The trial was scheduled for August 1996. Jack initially pleaded not guilty and appeared to be motionless in early court appearances. Although facing the weight of evidence and the prospect of execution, Jack abruptly changed course in the spring of 1996. Just 4 months before his trial was set to begin, Jack Owens Spilman III entered a plea agreement with the prosecutors. He agreed to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for the state dropping its pursuit of the death penalty. But then in an extremely surprising development Jack admitted to another murder.

13:04 For reasons that remain somewhat unclear, Jack voluntarily confessed to the murder of another victim, 9-year-old Penny Davis. In September of 1994, Penny told her brother that she was going to go out for a walk, but that she wouldn't stray too far from home. However, Penny did not return home that day. She was later discovered on the 28th of March 1995 in a shallow grave. Up until that point, Penny's case had remained officially unsolved. But as part of the plea deal, he admitted his guilt in Penny's case as well, thereby resolving that case without a separate trial.

13:40 Jack's admission regarding Penny Davis caught some in law enforcement off guard. Authorities had suspected his involvement as he did live in the same building as Penny at the time, but they lacked any direct evidence to indict him. Jack offered no detailed account of how he killed Penny, and her remains were too decomposed to determine the exact cause of death, and Jack just refused to elaborate, perhaps due to the level of depravity. Having said that investigators did know that Penny's body had been posed in a grotesque way similar to the Huffman victims. It later emerged that Jack had returned to Penny's shallow grave after the murder exumed her corpse to commit acts upon her body before then burying her again.

14:27 On the 30th of April 1996, Jack formally pleaded guilty to three counts of firstdegree murder. He was 27 years old at the time of his conviction. For the aggravated murder of Rita Huffman, the judge sentenced Jack to life in prison without the possibility of parole. For the murder of Mandy, Jack received a consecutive 70-year prison term. Additionally, for the murder of Penny Davis, he was sentenced to 45 years and 6 months in prison. The sentences were set to run back to back. In total, Jack effectively received a life sentence plus 115 years, ensuring that he would never leave prison alive. Essentially this outcome was equivalent to what a jury might have decided if they had convicted Jack and spared him of the death penalty. During the entire trial Jack made no statements and showed absolutely no remorse. He only spoke briefly to confirm his guilty pleas on record. The courtroom had to see and

15:25 hear some of the most gruesome details of his crimes as the prosecution recounted the evidence for the record. Family members of the victims were also present, having to hear what their loved ones suffered in their final moments. Now, also be careful if you do look up this case online after you watch this video. There are crime scene photographs of the murders, and they are some of the most gruesome, disturbing photographs I have ever seen. When the trial was finally over and the courtroom fell silent, what lingered wasn't just the horror of Jack's crimes, it was the unsettling clarity of his intent. He wanted this. He wanted to be known as an infamous serial killer. He was likely just disappointed that he got caught too soon. The evidence in the trial laid bare a man consumed by fantasies of domination and death. The careful stalking, the sadistic mutilation, the return to his victim's bodies. In

16:18 reflection, detectives and prosecutors described him not as a man who lost control, but as one who sought control through cruelty. Even after receiving life without parole, Jack offered no apology to the victim's families. Detectives later said that he didn't feel remorse. He felt accomplishment. Investigators who interviewed him described him as a sadist and a narcissist who took great satisfaction in the notoriety of his crimes. And while he was sometimes cooperative during questioning, that cooperation was calculated and not compassionate. It's believed he only told the police about Penny so he could cement his legacy as an actual serial killer with three confirmed kills. The case of Jack Spilman is now referred to as the werewolf butcher. Today, Jack remains behind bars for life, a fate that guarantees that he will never harm another innocent soul again.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "A Case So GRUESOME The Police Needed Therapy"?

In order: 0:00 Rita Huffman, East Wanachi; 9:00 Douglas County, Jack Owen Spilman III; 12:00 Penny Davis, Mandy Huffman, Rita Huffman.

What is mentioned in this Disturban episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Rita Huffman, Penny Davis, East Wanachi, Jack Owen Spilman III, Douglas County, Mandy Huffman. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "A Case So GRUESOME The Police Needed Therapy"?

The episode runs 17 min; the transcript is about 2,810 words in 20 timestamped sections.

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